AHA Scientific Sessions 2026 AbstractNov 9, 2026, 02:14 GMT

Inflammation protein may help refine heart disease risk estimates

The inflammation marker interleukin-6 separated event rates between people reassigned to higher and lower risk groups by 1.15 per 1,000 person-years, versus 0.54 for C-reactive protein.

Paper by Patrick Cheon, Alexander C Razavi, Nicholas Chew, +7Michael D Shapiro · Wake Forest Univ Sch of Medicine

Blood cells surround dense protein clusters beside scarred heart tissue and sparse proteins beside intact tissue, with a small group of people nearby.

Our read

Biomarkers

Studied:: Cohort study of 32,920 adults without cardiovascular disease, 10 years
What changed:: Interleukin-6 separated cardiovascular event rates after risk reassignment by 1.15 versus 0.54 per 1,000 person-years for C-reactive protein
The catch:: The analysis measured risk reclassification, not cardiovascular benefits from IL-6-guided treatment
In the record:: The 1,057th paper on IL-6 with results in people; 4,994 on record in all.

Editor of record: Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News

Paper

UK Biobank participants—32,920 adults aged 30–79 without cardiovascular disease—were followed for 10 years in an observational study. Women made up 53.8% of participants. Researchers compared interleukin-6, an immune signaling protein, with C-reactive protein, an inflammation marker measured using a high-sensitivity test. They assessed whether either added to an existing score estimating 10-year cardiovascular risk.

During follow-up, 1,170 cardiovascular events occurred: heart attacks, strokes or deaths from coronary heart disease. Higher interleukin-6 was associated with events in all four risk categories after accounting for the risk score. The association with C-reactive protein was not statistically clear in the intermediate-risk category. Interleukin-6 also produced a larger gap in event rates between people reassigned to higher and lower risk categories.

Why it matters

For cardiovascular disease prevention as people age, the authors proposed interleukin-6 as a potential addition to risk assessment, particularly for people classified as low or intermediate risk.

Caveats

Other differences between participants with higher and lower inflammation levels could have contributed to their cardiovascular risk. These conference-abstract findings covered adults aged 30–79 without cardiovascular disease and with C-reactive protein at or below 10 mg/L.